Sounds and Smells of Deutschland

Thomas Gottschalk........Wetten Das?, Dali Dali , Na Sowas!
Musik Laden.............now that was funny watching the German audience enjoying themselves ( not) and trying to dance.


Living north east of Hannover we got East German telly as well. Political programmes, sports shows, political rallys ect, and when Brezhnev died TV went into over drive. Solemn music , black ties and blanket coverage of the funeral.

ah musik laden,the beauty of marrianna rosenberg and the chin of udo jurgens..memories ...memories...graham..

Amanda Lear could never work out if she (?) was a woman with a deep voice or a bloke in a dress.
On Sky ( the old analog system) there was a programme called Wa(h)re Liebe the presenter was a transvestite called Lilo Wanders who sounded more feminine than Amanda Lear .

I remember Lilo Wanders on the German Analogue SAT Channel. 19.2 East. More like what she presented!!!!

I believe they have tightened up on on 'what and when' was transmitted before 23:00 on Thursday night!!!!!

ChrisP wrote:

For exactly the same reason as you, brum, I don't know why but I remember a radio programme we used to tune into at 7.05pm called, surprisingly, 'Funf nach Seben' (Not sure about spelling). This was during the 70's and I have no idea what channel it was on. It played all the latest disco sounds and latest records. I think they figured out that some of us brits were listening because the announcer would occassionally speak in English for us. But it was the 70's disco music that we all tuned in for. Oh those platform shoes! And, of course, there was also the glam rock!

Being a 20-year old at the time, and out at the clubs every night!, I of course purchased a pair of inexpensive (okay...cheap) platform boots. Not outrageously platformed, but they did have at least and inch and half if not two inch platform to them. I was quite proud of them!

Friends of mine (the son of a British major I was chums with when his father was attached to the Canadians in Soest and his roommate) were a bit more adventurous and showed up for a weekend visit with platform boots rather amateurishly painted with glitter along the platforms! You know, that cheap stuff one could buy at hobby shops to paint onto day glo posters! Every step they took bits of it would flake off LOL

bob wrote:

Amanda Lear could never work out if she (?) was a woman with a deep voice or a bloke in a dress.
On Sky ( the old analog system) there was a programme called Wa(h)re Liebe the presenter was a transvestite called Lilo Wanders who sounded more feminine than Amanda Lear .

Rumour had it she was actually a male-to-female transsexual and she was involved with Salvador Dali, the Surrealist painter (dripping clock in desert landscapes fame) who was still alive at the time but bloody ancient!!

Certainly striking looking but that voice....I have an LP of hers, one of three maybe she released?, and she couldn't sing worth a damn but the song she was famous for in the period suited that Marlene Dietrich, throaty husky voice.

Going back a bit now as I was in Hannover from 1955 to 1957 but I clearly remember a swing and jazz programme on AFN (American Forces Network) called 'Night Train to Munich'. It was presented by a guy who called himself 'The Baron of Bounce'. It used to come on the air about midnight on a Saturday night for a couple of hours and if we were in barracks at that time it was always on. He played all the latest and standard American big band and jazz recordings, many of which were not available in UK at that time. I had bought myself a pretty good German radio set and a few of my like-minded pals had many a late night listening session with the Baron. Happy days!

Noch ein bier

Norman.

I almost forgot about a singer called Katerina Valente who was always on the German radio. I think she was Italian but mostly sang in German. She had a voice to stir the blood and as gorgeous to go with it. She made a few recordings in English in the late 1950s as I can remember hearing her on UK record programmes.

Noch ein bier,

Norman.

I quite liked WDR, and as I speak pretty fluent German I never had a problem understanding the films and stuff.

Getting back on thread, do any of you recall how Germany did smell. I swear it had a totally different smell than England, I don't know quite how to define that, but I believe if you blindfolded me and put me on a German street I'd know I was in Germany.

Still remember it well, a cross between very bad American ciggies and a stale sort of smell - strange because the smell in Holland was completely different. Still that was in 1955 - may have changed since then??

I remember the smell too. The smell of the cigarettes (Turkish tobacco, weren't they ?) mixed with the smell of coffee. Never got used to the ciggy smell.
I seem to remember the smell around a farm was pretty terrible. One time on exercise we were posing in a Champ with the top down, 3 or 4 aerials up, dead proud of ourselves. Ahead of us a farmer was spraying some sort of slurry on a field and it was blowing across the road. We had to sit there, knowing what was coming but there was no escape, I have never smelled anything so bad and it was in our clothes for the rest of the Ex.
(Blaster Bates described a similar incident !)

spud-nick wrote:

Still remember it well, a cross between very bad American ciggies and a stale sort of smell - strange because the smell in Holland was completely different. Still that was in 1955 - may have changed since then??

Hmm, yes maybe, but it wasn't a bad smell was it really spud.

Brum, i agree, some of those small German farms were real stinkers. LOl.

brum wrote:

Ahead of us a farmer was spraying some sort of slurry on a field and it was blowing across the road.

Rural areas in Germany as well as small towns did not have mains sewers, and relied on Sceptic Tanks, which were emptied on a (not so at times) regular basis, and the HUMAN Slurry was spread on the fields as fertiliser.

Now I live in a fairly rural part of North Yorkshire and the smell of Pig or Cattle Slurry that is still spread on the fields around here has nothing on Human S##T which I can still remember from Germany!

ah, is that what it was then Mike. We used to do that in this country prior to the BOER war. Whole,barges of "night soil" used to wend there way up the Thames to the farmers fields. This was prior to the Victorian's putting in the sewer system. London used to be know as the great wen.

Very high in Nutrients I am told!

In some Northern Towns Urine was picked up from the back door in bottles for use in the weaving industry, and was into the 50's as Urea (CO(NH2)2) was used to treat wool before weaving, and the story goes that on a wet day, the House of Lords used to smell of wee becouse all the gentry wore Tweed Jackets LoL

mike 2817

Thanks for that Mike. Oh, we knew what was in that cloud of slurry all right. Reckon the farmer knew we were coming too!

I had an idea you knew Brum!

I used to live at the end of Sennelarger Strip, and of course its bars, clubs and Food Joints and it had a differant smell at night, than it had the next morning! But it was clean by around 7.30 again. As I used to walk along the Strip to the front gate of STC to get my papers from Church Army at the weekend. During the week worked round the back in the rail sideings loading/unloading trains when required, and the backs of the clubs were another story...

England has its own smells that differ from location to location as well as I am sure every other country, and we all hark back to the 'old days' which have past us by, and even Germany has moved on, sad to say.

Probably Mike, I haven't been back there since the mid eighties. Shame really, I loved Germany and pretty much grew up there.

Er...
This stuff that was picked up in bottles from the back door in northern towns. Didn't they rename it "John Smiths Bitter"?
(Hee Hee !)

No 'Federation Ale' Brum

Brum referred to Blaster Bates and a slurry tank. I remember a BB story about him blowing out a septic tank on a farm near Shrewsbury. He got it slightly wrong and as he said 'pebble-dashed the farmhouse to the front and side'. He also described it as 'a shower of s..t over Shropshire!!

Noch ein bier,

Norman.

You're giving your age away there Norman !
Blaster Bates's "The Shower of Shit Over Shropshire" involved an Italian POW, I seem to recall. He gave us some laughs in the 70's.
Strangely enough, I ended up living in the town Blaster was from, I never dreamed, in those days that I'd be working round the places that he was talking about on his records!

Mike_2817 wrote:

Very high in Nutrients I am told!

In some Northern Towns Urine was picked up from the back door in bottles for use in the weaving industry, and was into the 50's as Urea (CO(NH2)2) was used to treat wool before weaving, and the story goes that on a wet day, the House of Lords used to smell of wee becouse all the gentry wore Tweed Jackets LoL

No it is because they are all old and incontinent.

Blaster Bates. Used to have his LP's (Big black shiney records in case any youngsters are looking in). We were well up for the comedians in those days. One of the favourites being Bill Cosby as I remember. The Medic, Ice Cream and the like.

bill cosbys " the streaker "